Fun times at Dulwich Leisure Centre on Friday...

[Bagpipes]

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[nxjen]

For those who don't see this as an issue, I wonder how they feel about easy access to the areas where their children and teenage daughters change.

[Bagpipes]

nxjen Wrote:

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> For those who don't see this as an issue, I wonder

> how they feel about easy access to the areas where

> their children and teenage daughters change.

Quite. By all means make it easier for people who feel gender dysphoria to legally change gender. But protect the privacy, dignity and safety of women and girls by maintaining single-sex spaces. And yes, that means no penises in girls and women's spaces however feminine your soul feels.

[Penguin68]

Surely the confusion and problem here lies (almost) in semantics. I have no problem with anyone choosing, even in a temporary fashion, which gender, or none, they wish to be 'known' as. Transvestites choose temporary genders, transexuals may choose to go to an extreme of surgical alteration, others may happily flit from one gender, or none, to another. However, gender and sex are not the same thing, and certain spaces (changing rooms, lavatories) are understood to be set aside for specific sexes, not specific genders. 'Single sex' is NOT the same thing as 'single gender'.

We are, perhaps, in the West too focused on people being either one sex/ gender or another (indeed on people being one or the other, but not neither, or both) - but that is our cultural inheritance.

However just as an individual can choose to be 'identified' as something they do not carry the DNA for, so, surely can someone else choose still not to identify them against their obvious genetic truth. If it is my right to self identify as a woman, for instance (which I'm not, genetically) then surely someone meeting me has the right not to identify me as such. Particularly in circumstances when they would very much not want to meet an intact male (sex) whatever gender that intact male is channeling.

What we need is 'spaces' or 'events' where the criterion for membership/ attendance is not gender but sex. With special consideration for those individuals who have surgically altered their outward appearance such that in all normal circumstances they would 'pass' as the relevant sex.

Which does not stop the creation of unisex events or spaces, where those people not concerned or worried can go. As the swimming pool at Dulwich normally is.

[taper]

Well said

[Robert Poste's Child]

I agree with Penguin68 too.

That said, the use of 'identify' is becoming a concern as it blurs the distinction between fact (can be proved by independent evidence) and belief (an idea we act on as though it were a fact). There's a clear link between that and the fake news era where when enough people agree on a version of events it seems to be accepted as truth.

I completely support people having the freedom to identify as whatever feels right for them, and to change that as they go through life, but throughout my 50+ years of life, whenever people have told me their story about how they knew they were gay or trans, culture has been a big part of it: 'because I hated dolls and liked playing football' or whatever. I think children - and adults - should be free to wear or play or love whatever or whoever they feel like without having to interpret that as being in the wrong body.

[Earl Aelfheah]

There is a difference between gender identity and expression. There is definitely debate around gender specific facilities. But the gender recognition act has nothing to do with changing rooms and there are a lot of different things being conflated here and some ridiculous connections being made between unrelated issues. That podcast that was linked to above is worth a listen if like most of us, you?re not that familiar with trans issues.

[taper]

As a man (biological and otherwise!) I find it terribly depressing that biological men are aggressively telling women what a woman is. And with that demeaning their whole world of experience and the oppression that comes with it. I'm sure being a trans woman has a whole world of oppression that comes with it too. But it's not the experience that women have. Plus the biology matters. It's the source opf the sh1t that women have had heaped upon them over hundreds of years.

[nxjen]

RRR. It?s not just a question of trans issues. What the protests are trying to bring home is that it?s also a question about women?s issues and rights. There needs to be a way of balancing the two,

[Nigello]

Why are you not as equally bothered by women telling other women what women are? To be logical in your outrage ou really ought to say you are bothered that a human is telling another human what to be. What about a woman changing to be a man, thereby escaping at least some of the difficulties women face? Does that person deserve less respect and concern because they are now becoming part of the "oppressors"?

[nxjen]

I really don?t follow what you?re trying to say. The protest is to draw attention that a system whereby trans are able to self identify can be open to abuse by those who simply say they identify as women to gain access to areas of a very personal and private nature for voyeuristic purposes.

[Penguin68]

Surely the problem here is context. I think it it right (appropriate) for a person to be able to determine which gender (or none) they would like to be treated as by the world in general - if I want to identify as a woman I would like that on my passport and I don't want people telling me I'm not because I carry certain DNA markers. But if I went mad and said I wanted to carry a child and wanted expensive fertility treatment I think that a doctor pointing out that I am genetically a man is entirely appropriate, as it would be if I fell sick and was diagnosed with prostate cancer, or was refused a cervical screen, despite being identified as a 'woman' on documents.

Changing rooms, single-sex events etc. fall into the context when being an intact male (or in intact female, although that is historically far less of an issue) may be relevant in determining access. As is the actual intact state of an individual involved with intimate examinations etc. when the person being examined cares what 'sex' (not gender) they are being examined by.

I think that government moves on easing gender identification and change (as a general issue) should not be overtaken by companies or authorities moving to a reductio ad absurdum position of giving access everywhere to anyone claiming to be anything.

And when it comes to monitoring 'sexism' and the way that women are, or aren't, treated fairly, to blur what being a 'woman' means is to make future analysis far less meaningful. There are always people who will game situations. 'All women' shortlists make sense when we are talking about sex, much less so when talking about gender.

Of course it can be argued that the actual proportion of people who would wish to really change gender identity (permanently or on occasion) is vanishingly small (well under 1% of the general population) - but if that is so why are we opening the floodgates to predatory people (where the number is certainly much larger) to game the situation?

[JohnL]

It's the people who have voyeuristic impulses who are the problem here not women or trans.

I cant see any solution other than additional gender fluid rooms.

[Nigello]

It was meant for taper.

[Robert Poste's Child]

In the past everyone changed in the small cubicles alongside the pool. Maybe something like that, with some larger ones for families?

That wouldn't address the issue of people wanting to join single-sex swimming sessions, of course. How do you balance the rights of different groups, for example trans vs people who for faith or other reasons can't join mixed sessions?

I do think even voyeurism can be harmful. When the mother and baby session starts on a Friday morning I've seen men in the other section whose heads go up like dogs spotting a squirrel. Whether they're looking at the mothers or the children I'm not sure but at lease there's a rope between them.